Tagline Terror

Copyright 2020 by Gary  L. Pullman

Tag line (n).: a catchphrase or slogan, especially as used in advertising.

Taglines.

Some may not read them.

Hell, some may not even see them.

What draws the eye in a movie poster is the art, after all. The images. The depictions of gruesome spectacles. Representations of mysterious events. Portraits of helpless victims. Pictures of pursuing monsters. Illustrations of dark, tight places in the middle of nowhere.

And, yet, posters' taglines can be quite suggestive—and quite terrifying—in their own right and in their own way.

They have a way of getting at the very heart of a story. For writers in search of ideas, taglines can also suggest stories; they can be muses. In addition, they can point to the roots of fear, to the sources of horror, to the bare bones beneath the flesh of fear. Look, here! This is what frightens—and here! This is why it scares.

Some fans love you to death (13 Fanboy [2020])

Former scream queens from the Friday the 13th series are hunted by a real[-]life killer who doesn't understand that it's all make believe (IMDb).

The tagline suggests how a popular saying can inspire the idea for a movie—and, perhaps, even much of its plot.

They look just like us (Freaks [2018[)

A bold girl discovers a bizarre, threatening, and mysterious new world beyond her front door after she escapes her father's protective and paranoid control (IMDb).

 

The tagline suggests that those who are regarded by “us” as being somehow “other” than we are differ from “us” not only in their behavior (which is, most likely, violent and threatening), but also in their appearance, making them easily recognizable. When such an assumption proves to be false, fear is heightened: we are being menaced by “others” from whom we cannot differentiate ourselves: we cannot tell the good guys (“us”) from the bad guys (“them”). Therefore, someone who looks like “us” could be a violent, threatening “other,” intent upon harming or killing “us.” Our situation, already desperate, has become much more dire!

Seven miles below

the ocean surface

a crew is trapped

and being hunted

 

(Underwater [2020[).

A crew of aquatic researchers work to get to safety after an earthquake devastates their subterranean laboratory. But the crew has more than the ocean seabed to fear (IMDb).

The tagline occupies four successive lines, breaking the thought it conveys into four fragments, breaks which emphasize each part: distance, location, dangerous situation, heightened danger. The tagline calls our attention to the desperate nature of the characters' predicament. It's bad to be seven miles below the surface of the sea; it's worse to be trapped, and its worse yet to be hunted while one is trapped in an isolated, hard-to-reach location. The tagline taps universal fears: the fear of being alone (monophobia), the fear of being trapped (claustrophobia), and the fear of being hunted (anatidaephobia). If the tagline applied to a novel, rather than to a movie, it would seem to condense several chapters into succinct, terrifying phrases. The tagline also implies several questions, arousing suspense: Will the characters escape their hunters? Will they escape their trap? Will they be able to return to the surface? Will they make it home again, alive and whole?

Evil knows your name (Impervious [2015).

Katie recently moved to a new house. In the basement, she finds old photos of a family who lived in the house and were all murdered. When she starts to investigate their story, frightening things begin to happen (IMDb).

We often think, That couldn't happen to me. We tell ourselves, Bad things only happen to other people. In other words, we lie to ourselves. We fib to protect ourselves from the truth that terrible things could happen to us. We prevaricate to defend ourselves from the knowledge that bad things happen to everyone, the “good” and the “bad” alike. Being “good” is no protection, just as being “bad” doesn't necessarily (and certainly doesn't always) cause bad things to happen to bad people. Sometimes, crime does pay. We also like to believe that the odds against something like that (whatever “that” may be) happening to us are astronomical. (That's what young people are saying now about dying from a coronavirus infection.) When it comes to evil, to suffering, to death, we don't take things personally; we prefer abstractions—statistics can be comforting; news reports about “others,” about “them,” can be reassuring. But what if evil knew your name? No my name. Not any name. Your name. What if evil developed a personal interest in you, specifically? What if evil targeted you, individually? What if evil hunted you, personally? The lies die. Truth survives. And the truth is that you are in danger. You may be targeted. Evil know your name!

Movie poster taglines. Don't overlook them.